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Saturday, 13 November 2010

Perhaps I am alone in this, but I always refer to 'fruit and vegetables' as opposed to 'fruits and vegetables', or 'fruits and vegetable'.

I seem to be having trouble with the plurals, because you can say a fruit or a vegetable and you can say some fruit or some vegetable as well as some fruits and some vegetables, but you can't say a fruits or a vegetables. So why do we say 'fruit and vegetables'?

4
comments
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ESL teacher to the rescue again! This is actually one of those parts of grammar that a native speaker will never be taught because you'll naturally produce them correctly (the vast majority of the time, at least), but ESL students must learn. Basically, there are two groups of nouns: countable and uncountable nouns. Countable nouns can be made plural: one apple, two apples; one book, two books. Uncountable nouns, though, can't: one information, two information; one money, two money. No can do. They also have different modifiers, though some overlap: for example, many apples, not much apples. But much information, not many information. There's lists of which modifiers can be used with which group. And then (finally getting to your question), there are words that can be either countable or uncountable depending on context. For example, marble. Three marbles to play games with (but not to lose, hopefully); too much marble in their mansion. Other examples of these kind include beer, paper ("the paper" presents all sorts of confusion), tea, chicken (I saw three chickens running in the farmyard; now I'm hungry for a ton of chicken for dinner.), fruit, vegetable, etc. Thus the confusion. Plus fruits and vegetables are just kind of crazy and slightly exceptions. Go bananas.

fruit, sheep, fish, etc ...I would like a dollar for every time someone puts an "s" (or "es")on the end of one of those words when it doesn't belong there ... because then I could give up work and live off the proceeds of investing said dollars ...